¾
Part 3, apres Pim/ after Pim, or the Abandon, of Comment
c’est/ How It Is in Viconian terms is given over to human reason, and while
Joyce structured Finnegans Wake into four Books, the fourth given over
to ‘the disintegration of society’ ( McHugh, 2016), Beckett separates his book
into three parts, each one similarly representing each of Vico’s three ages:
divine, heroic and human, given over to religion, force and reason
respectively. But why Beckett kept three parts as opposed to Joyce’s four would
appear to have a lot to do with the hidden properties of the numbers 3 and 4
themselves, which makes up the subject of the following paper. Taking the sigla
m as a point of departure, which for Joyce denotes Humphrey Chimpdem
Earwicker ( HCE ), or God, the paternal father, and Beckett’s apparent
obsession with mathematics in general, and in Comment c’est/How It Is in
particular the Rule of Three, this paper traces the links from Hebraic geometry
in Finnegans Wake Book III. 3, and how Beckett in part 3 of Comment
c’est/How It is picks up on Joyce’s obsession with the number 4. In Jewish
culture, as in Christian, the number has sacred properties, for the jews
denoting God, while for Christians signifying the four points of the cross, and
the four evangelists Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. While for Beckett, it allows
him to give into his inexhaustible preoccupation with permutations, in order to
exhaust all possibility ( Deleuze, 1995) – the existence of God!
In Dante…Bruno.Vico..Joyce, the young Beckett
summarised Giambattista Vico’s Sienza nouva in the following way.
Part
1 is a mass of past shadow, corresponding therefore
to
Vico’s first human institution, Religion, or to his
Theocratic
age, or simply to an abstraction – Birth. Part 2
is
the lovegame of children, corresponding to the second
institution,
Marriage, or to the Heroic age, or to an abstraction-
Maturity.
Part 3 is passed in sleep, corresponding to the
third
institution, Burial, or to the Human age, or to an
abstraction
-Corruption. Part 4 is the day beginning again,
and
corresponds to Vico’s Providence, or to an abstraction –
Generation. [1]
But as Beckett is at pains to point out, the ‘neat
construction’[2]
is not altogether so neat. Meaning that elements from part 1 will tend to flow
into, or merge, with part 2, just as elements from part 2, likewise, will tend
to intermingle with part 3, and so on. What is true for Vico surely must also
be true for Joyce, in Finnegans Wake, and if Beckett is, to some degree,
using Vico, as Joyce did, as a structural underpinning for Comment c’est/How
It Is, and to what extent being the subject of the following study, then
surely one of the tasks here must be to attempt to clarify, or at least briefly
illuminate as to what extent?
This brings us
to the first question; why did Beckett decide to split Comment c’est/How It
Is into three parts, rather than 4, as Joyce did with Finnegans Wake?
This will be the central question which I shall be attempting some kind of
answer in the present work, yet rather than seeing this difference as a flaw in
the overall theory that Samuel Beckett did, to a certain degree, use
Giambattista Vico’s Scienza nouva as James Joyce did for Finnegans
Wake, as a structural device in which to organise the content of his epic
attempt at a full length novel, I will be, rather contrastingly, attempting to
show that the structural relinquishment of part 4 is actually of such
structural importance to Beckett’s book that it acts instead as almost irretractable
proof rather that Vico’s and, just as importantly, Joyce’s work were prime
motivators behind the core foundation of Comment c’est/How It Is. A
pretty bold claim, but I believe I have the proof required to substantially back
it up. So, let us begin.
Instead of starting chronologically with Vico, as I
have done previously, or Joyce for that matter, I should like to go straight to
what I believe is the heart of the matter and take a direct quote from How
It Is. Notice also that I am going straight to the author’s own English
translation this time, as opposed to the original French. This change of tactic
was brought on by the absolutely superlative stage productions by Gare Saint
Lazare Players Ireland who performed the work so wonderfully in English
that all my former prejudice to the work in English was promptly destroyed[3].
fleeting
impression I quote that in trying to present in three
parts
or episodes an affair which all things considered involves
four
one is in danger of being incomplete [4]
Such is the case with Comment c’est / How It Is,
there being three parts alone to Beckett’s novel, corresponding to the three
ages in Vico’s Sienza nouva – see figure 1.
Age Type Nature Trope Comment c’est/How It Is
1st divine religion The wandering avant Pim/ before Pim
2nd heroic force
The couple avec Pim/with Pim
3rd human reason The Abandon apres Pim/after Pim
( figure 1 )
If one compares the above table with Beckett’s summary
of Joyce’s thematic structure of Finnegans Wake, one can see quite
clearly that Beckett’s template above is far more in keeping, literally, with
Vico’s three ages. But there is more, much more.
I
quote that of our total life it states only three quarters
( p.113. )
Throughout part 3, apres Pim/after Pim, of Comment
c’est/How It Is there are references to a missing quarter. Why? This is of some
significance, surely? What can it possibly mean? In an attempt to answer this
question, we must return to Vico and the primary importance which he gives to
the Jews in Scienza nuova.
Che
dev’esser un invitto argomento che gli ebrei furono
il
primo popolo del nostro mondo ed hanno serbato
con
veritá le loro memorie nella storia sagra fin dal
principo
del mondo. [5]
The Chaldaeans coming second, in order of importance,
followed by the Scythians, the Phoenicians and finally in fifth position the
Egyptians. Many studies have been devoted to the importance of numbers, and the
Hebraic mathematical tradition, in regards to Joyce, and in particular to Finnegans
Wake.Most recently, for example, the Irish academic Jonathan McCreedy
published a paper on the significance of the Freemasons and numerology in the Wake.
McCreedy cites still little explored documents, for example Joyce’s diaries
and notebooks in which certain ‘Sigla’ [6] , or signs, are assigned
to the central characters of the novel. Most interestingly, for the present
work, is the sigla m to denote the book’s main protagonist Humphrey
Chimdem Earwicker. HCE being synonymous with God, the Great Architect, or
patriarchal figure par excellence. Looking now to How It Is, this may
perhaps shed some light on the apparently mysterious fragment in part 3 which
refers to the letter m and its importance in the names that will be assigned to
characters.
two
there were two of us his hand on my arse someone had
come
Bom Bem one syllable m at the end all that matters Bem
had
come to cleave to me see later Pim and me I had come to
cleave
to Pim the same thing except that me Pim Bem me Bem
left
me south ( p.95 )
So, this is a pretty significant finding, as once
again it is illuminating, and quite significantly, the reliance on Beckett to
Joyce particularly with respect to Finnegans Wake. But this is but the
start, as when one follows the evidence further, it becomes, quite frankly,
overwhelming.[7]
In Jewish numerology or Gemetria ( or Geometry
), the number four, or Dalet ( also other variations Dales, dalet, and
daleth ) is the number which represents God. ‘Yaweh’ the unnameable,
quite literally. As it is considered blasphemous to take the name of God in
vain, orthodox Jewish believers refer to their God using the number 4, or by
saying “The Name”, or the one who must remain nameless, all of which would
sound uncannily familiar to readers of the literature of Samuel Beckett. Yet
notions of Jewishness are not so prevalent about the author, as they are say
with James Joyce. In this essay, I wish to tease out the many references to
both Joyce and Jewishness, and particularly in relation to Vico, as already
underlined, but also in relation to ‘la règle de trois’ or the Rule of Three
and the number four and their significance in Comment c’est/How It Is.[8]
In my English translation of How It Is, the
Editor, Édouard Magessa O’Reilly, includes, mercifully, a draft typescript of Comment
c’est, courtesy of the Beckett International Foundation, University of
Reading. In it appears the following:
J’ai
toujours aimé l’arithmétique et spécialement la règle de trois,
et
elle me l’a bien rendu,
Literally translating as, ‘I have always loved the
rule of three, she has always done well by me,’. Now, the Rule of Three, as it
was explained very clearly to me by two Latin American accountants, is when you
have 3 numbers that are known, from which you can calculate the unknown fourth
entity. For example, if the sum of ten units gives you 100%, then the amount in
percent of six units, the unknown element, is 60% . We could illustrate it like
so.
(A)
100% 10
( B)
(D) ? 6 units ( C)
Now, in relation to Joyce, the number four becomes one
of the recurring themes in part 3, curiously enough, of Book 3. Three being the
age given over to human reason, in Giambattista Vico’s three ages of man. There
are references throughout the chapter. There are also plenty of signals to the
Jews. ‘Lowly, longly a wail went forth’. The first sentence of the chapter
begins. ‘Pure Yawn lay low.’ ( p.474) Yawn being a reference to Shaun, one of
HCE/God’s sons, who is sleeping, the
sleep of reason. Again the name changing, which is another highly
characteristic ploy of Beckett, but particularly in Comment c’est/How It Is.[9]
But, perhaps the most pertinent reference, for our
present purpose, is the sign X which Joyce used to denote ‘Those four claymen
clomb together’ ( III.3, p.475); ‘First klettered Shanator Gregory, seeking
spoor through the deep timefield, Shanator Lyons, trailing the wavy line of his
partition footsteps’, ‘then his Recordship, Dr Shunadure Tarpey, caperchasing
after honourable sleep, hot onto the aniseed and, up out of his prompt corner,
old Shunny MacShunny,’. The sign, or letter, X being the letter most
representative of the Cross of Saint Andrew, which Beckett makes much use of
in, particularly in part 3 of Comment c’est/ How It Is but which is
introduced for the first time in part 2, avec Pim/ with Pim.
now
his arms Saint Andrews cross top V reduced aperture
left
hand moves up the left branch follows it into the sack his
sack
he holds his sack on the inside near the mouth more daring
than
me my hand lingers a moment on his like chords his veins
withdraws
and resumes its place on the left in the mud no more
about
this sack for the moment (p.49.)
In his essay L’epuisé/ The Exhausted, Giles Deleuze
refers to Beckett’s ‘relentless Spinozism’.
“That
the impossible should be asked of me, good, what else could be
asked
of me?” ( Unnamable 70 ). There is no more possibility: a
relentless
Spinozism. Does he exhaust the possible because he is
himself
exhausted, or is it because he has exhausted the possible?[10]
Deleuze goes on to point out that ‘God is the
originary, or the ensemble of all possibility. The possible is only realised in
the derivative,’ ( p.3). Hence, all the derivations, the countless innumerable
permutations which are the hallmark of all Beckett’s texts, but particularly so
in part 3, apres Pim/ after Pim.
and
three if only three of us and so numbered only 1 to 3 four
rather
it’s preferable clearer picture if only four of us and so
numbered
1 to 4
then
two places only at the extremities of the greatest chord say
A
and B for the four couples the four abandoned
two
tracks only of a semi-orbit each say how shall we say AB
and
BA for the travellers
The narrator imagines the four - tormentor victim/
victim tormentor – as if forming a great
Saint Andrew’s cross, and the various formulations, or
possible combinations, are enumerated. Interestingly, just after Beckett
completed the English translation How It Is in 1963, he started work on
a piece for theatre for the actor Jack MacGrowan ‘called tentavively ‘JM Mime’[11], only to abandon, and
which 16 years later he would go back to, in order to write a ‘crazy invention
for TV’ ( p.672), namely the silent performance he called Quad in which
the four characters are given the following trajectories around a central point
in the quad, which they must not touch, and just as in Comment c’est/How It
Is they must circumnavigate ‘deasil’ ( HII p.102), that is to say
clockwise.
Trajet
de 1: AC, CB, BA, AD, DB, BC, CD, DA
Trajet
de 2: BA, AD, DB, BC, CD, DA, AC, CB
Trajet
de 3: CD, DA, AC, CB, BA, AD, DB, BC
Trajet
de 4: DB, BC, CD, DA, AC, CB, BA, AD[12]
Compare the above combinations of movement of the
actors in Quad to the following passage in part 3 Comment c’est/How
It Is.
victim
of number 4 at A en route along AB tormentor of
number
2 at B abandoned again but this time at B victim
again
of number 4 but this time at B en route again but this
time
along BA tormentor of number 2 again but this time at
A
and finally abandoned again at A and all set to begin
again (
p.103)
Till the narrator imagines a million permutations,
with 500 000 victims 500 000 tormentors, ‘migration of slime worms’ ( p.98),
and they are all assigned numbers. Tormentor and victim alike. ‘we are a
million strong by the other 499997 abandoned’ ( p.99), after taking out 3 –
‘whom Bom left to come towards me and by him to go towards whom Pim left’
(p.99)[13].But what does all this
mean? What does it all signify? The Cross of Saint Andrew offers a clue, the
Rule of 3 too, and the importance of the number 4 represented by m in
both Finnegans Wake and Hebraic geometry. Pi or π is the ratio of
a circle’s circumference to its diameter, it is a constant number. It is also
known as Archimedes Constant, and placed before m forms the name Pim.
One is instantly reminded of Da Vinci’s image of the Vitruvian Man, in which a
man is placed within a square, that is circumscribed by a circle.
I remember reading from a memoir somewhere, I cannot
for the life of me remember where, unfortunately. But, in it a German actor,
who was working with Beckett at the time, couldn’t help himself, I think they
were working on staging Godot, and while they were in the canteen of the
theatre getting lunch, he turned to Beckett, rather embarrassingly, and asked
him what did it all mean? To which Beckett, very generously, replied that full
knowledge in the modern world was no longer possible, at least as it had been
in Leonardo Da Vinci’s time. I remember this reference to Leonardo, very
distinctly, and it seems to me that this is what profoundly distinguishes
Beckett from Joyce, and here I am coming back to Finnegans Wake in
regards to its four distinctive Books, or parts, as opposed to Comment
c’est/How It Is with its three. The missing quarter perhaps signifying the
missing fourth part, the missing part in us all and which we strive for, and
which some call Godhead.
Bibliography
Beckett,
Samuel: Comment C’est, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1992.
Beckett,
Samuel: How It Is, Edited by Édouard Magessa O’Reilly, Faber &
Faber, London, First Edition 2009.
Beckett,
Samuel: Quad et autres pièces pour la télévision suivi de L’Épuisé par
Gilles Deleuze, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1996.
Joyce,
James: Finnegans Wake, With an Introduction by Len Platt, Wordsworth
Classics, London, 1987.
Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame, Bloomsbury,
London, First Edition 1996.Vico,
Giambattista: New Science, Translated by David
Marsh with an Introduction by Anthony Grafton, Penguin Books, London, 1999.
[1] Beckett, Samuel: Disjecta,
Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, Edited by Ruby Cohn, Grove
Press, New York, 1984, First Grove Press Edition, p.22.
[3] I had the absolute pleasure of
watching both Conor Lovett and Stephen Dillane perform the work both on stage
in Cork during the first staged performance of part 1 of How It Is in
the Everyman Theatre in February, 2018. This was followed by an invitation to
see them perform bits of part 1 at the Centre Cultural Irlandais in Paris as
part of the first How It Is symposium, which I had been invited to
participate in, and later again at both Conor Lovett’s and Judy Hegarty
Lovett’s beautiful home in Mericourt in France, where both Conor and Stephen
invited me to join them while they rehearsed together before giving their
performances of part 1 again in the UK, later that same year. Finally, I also
got to see the two actors give a forty minute private performance of sections
of part 2 in the Crawford Art Gallery, again in Cork, in June 2019, as part of
the second How It Is symposium which I had been also invited to
participate in the place of Gerry Dukes who had taken sick. It was because of
the strength and beauty of their performances of the text in English,
translated by the author, that I decided to reread the text in English again,
as I had previously only being focusing on the original French text up till
then.
[4] Beckett, Samuel: How It Is,
Edited by Édouard Magessa O’Reilly, Faber & Faber, London, First Edition
2009, p.113. I shall be referring to this edition throughout this text, merely
giving page number to facilitate reading.
[5] Vico, Giambattista: Nouva
scienza
[6] McCreedy, Johnathan: The “Freely
Masoned” Symbols of Finnegans Wake:
[7] For a more detailed analysis of the
structural underpinnings in Finnegans Wake, see Roland McHugh’s Annotations
to Finnegans Wake, John Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Fourth Edition, 2016. In
the synopsis, he refers to the signs or sigla which Joyce used to denote
certain characters in the book. M for example being the sign for HCE,
and X ‘equating with the four evangelists and also with the authors of an Irish
manuscript, the Annals of the Four Masters.’p.X. See also, John Bishop’s
Joyce’s Book of the Dark, Finnegans Wake, The University of Wisconsin
Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1986. See in particular, chapter 7, “Vico’s Night
of Darkness” The New Science and Finnegans Wake, p.174.
[8] Ideally, an annotated edition of Comment
c’est/How It Is needs to be made to complement Édouard Magessa O’Reilly’s Critical
Genetic Edition of Comment c’est/How It Is and / et L’image ( Routledge,
1st edition, 2001).
[9] At times almost to the point of
plagiarism, consider the following passage from chapter 3, or part 3, of Book 2
in Finnegans Wake – ‘BENK! We sincerely trust that Missus with the
kiddies of sweet Gorteen has not BINK to their very least tittles deranged if
in BUNK and we greesiously augur for your Meggers a BENK BANK BONK to sloop in
with all sorts of adceterus and adsaturas.’ ( p.379) The very same screaming
capitals which Beckett uses in Comment c’est/How It Is, not to mention
the monosyllabic appellations: ‘BIM BAM BOM BEM PIM PAM etc.
[10] Deleuze, Giles: The Exhausted,
translated by Anthony Uhlmann, Source SubStance, Vol. 24, No. 3, Issue
78 ( 1995), pp. 3-28, p. 3.
[11] Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame,
Bloomsbury, London, First Edition 1996, p. 506.
[12] Beckett, Samuel: Quad et autres
pièces pour la télévision suivi de L’Épuisé par Gilles Deleuze, Les
Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1996, p.9.
[13] It
is impossible to read the countless 6 digit permutations without being reminded
of the identification tatoos of concentration camp inmates of Auschwitz, which
were also in six digits. But there is another perhaps more poignant connection
between the 6 digit permutations and Finnegans Wake and Comment c’est/How It Is
which we cannot rule out. In Damned to Fame, James Knowlson points out that the
arrest of Paul Léon, a Jew who worked voluntarily for James Joyce as secretary
and helper while Joyce was working on
FW, was a key factor in Beckett’s
decision to join the resistance in September 1941. Léon was to ‘disappear’ to a
concentration
camp. Lucie Léon, the man’s wife, recounts how Beckett used
to give her his own food packages, despite being in need himself, in order to
show solidarity.
